Books of the Year, Part 1: All hail Jaime!

I think I read fewer comic books in 2011 than I've read since the early 1980s. Chalk it up to lack of time, lack of interest (I like the concept behind DC's giant reboot, but I couldn't see myself sampling all those new books -- liked OMAC a lot, though) and lack of free boxes of comic books arriving on my doorstep. Still, there was some truly great stuff on the stands (Stands? Do they still exist?) in 2011. Like, for instance...

Just like everyone else in the world, I thought Love and Rockets New Stories #4 -- specifically Jaime Hernandez' conclusion of "The Love Bunglers" -- was more than just the best story of the year, it was one of the best comic stories I've ever read. (Yes, even better than last year's Love and Rockets masterpiece, Jaime's "Browntown" -- though it plays off that story in a brilliant way.) I've been following the exploits of Maggie and Hopey since the mid 1980s, and "The Love Bunglers" paid off all those years with an emotional impact it's hard to explain -- especially if you haven't been following the characters for that long. Everything about the story -- the pacing, the layout, the script and (of course) the art -- was dead-on perfect, but it all added up to way more than the sum of its parts. Maybe the greatest work by the greatest living cartoonist. Seriously.

And, as long as we're on the topic, the latest Love and Rockets collection, "Esperanza," was pretty spectacular, too, following Hopey into her teaching career, Ray along his obsessive romance with the woman nicknamed "Frogmouth" and Mags, dear mags, into some seriously weird territory involving Frogmouth, Doyle and Izzy. If you don't read Love and Rockets, you have no idea what or whom I'm talking about. If you do, though, you know what rich characters these people are and what rich lives they live.

Like I said, Jaime Hernandez is the greatest living cartoonist. If you want proof, read these two books.